Water and Its Effects
by control of chaos
Summary: Being a winter spirit has its unwelcome side effects, and the Guardians are about to find just how adorable those effects are. Chibi!Jack, chibi!Bunny, and other cute fluff inside. (no pairings)
1. A Little Fall of Rain?

_This is part of a fluff competition with my sister, as well as part of the round 2 prompts for rotg_kink and ao3. Picture courtesy of _demitasse-lover_ on deviantart._

**Water and Its Effects**

The North Pole was in a state of absolute disarray, the likes of which had not been seen since the last mass sugar rush two decades prior (resulting in the mandatory midday breathalyzer tests for sugar and caffeine levels in the elves). Yetis scrambled to follow directions for cleanup and elves just got in the way, their high-pitched, jingling hats acting as neon caution signals to warn the yetis and other Guardians of their presence. A dozen elves had already been squished already in the turmoil; though they recovered quickly, they still had to be dragged from the footpaths by their fellow mischief-makers.

It was a chaotic scene, but it hadn't started that way. It had started the way most adventures do…with a small mistake. In this particular incident, that mistake happened to be a simple weather forecasting miscalculation on the part of a particular winter sprite and a googie-bearing bunny.

* * *

Jack's arms were folded, his stance still hesitant. "Really?"

Jamie stood confidently in front of him. "Really."

The pair was in the young believer's room, Jamie lazily sprawled on the end of his bed and the winter sprite nervously standing just out of sight of the window. The boy followed his friend with his eyes as he glided back and forth across the wooden floorboards, his feet not quite touching the floor to prevent heavy ice from being left in his wake. Until the topic of Bunnymund and his current location had come up, Jack had been perched easily in the window frame, spreading frost over the glass panes where his hand brushed against it.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, glancing down to the street. "Are you sure? He seemed pretty irritated about his little egglets when I left yesterday. Maybe it's a trick."

The eleven-year-old rolled his eyes. "You only frosted them up and stacked them into a snow castle while he was sleeping. What in that could possibly irritate him?" Even at twelve, Jamie had a pretty good idea of what the adults called "common sense" by now, something he was convinced that Jack had absolutely none of. That, and a lack of self-preservation instincts. He'd learned about those in their biology unit and it had instantly reminded him of Jack. "But no, I don't think he's trying to get back at you. Besides," the boy pointed down to the two figures on the lawn below them, "he's looking after Sophie right now and there's still at least five inches of snow on the ground. It's your turf." Christmas was already three months behind them, but Jack had yet to let up on the constant snowfall in his favorite corner of the world.

"It is my turf, isn't it?" His wide grin was infectious, and within moments Jamie was asking what he was so happy about. Rather than answer, Jack gestured to the open window. "I think it's time for a little fun. How about you?" He whistled out to the open air as he slipped out to the short overhang above the porch, Jamie holding delicately to the crook of his staff. With his high shrill came a sudden upsweep of wind that rustled almost happily through his unruly snow-white hair. Jamie giggled as he felt a gust duck under one arm and around the hand clutching on to the icy wood.

Nodding sharply at the wind, as if they had exchanged words, Jack grabbed for an invisible intercom and declared in a deep voice, "Alright, safety checks are complete and we are ready for liftoff!" The end of the shepherd's hook in Jack's hands briefly made contact with the rough shingles to send out a short burst of frost in a nearly straight path to the edge of the roof. "Hold on tight!" was Jamie's only warning before a sudden pull sent him skidding on the slick surface. He barely got his second hand on to the hook before he was airborne, a laugh escaping his throat as thrill of delight shot through him. Whenever Jack did something like this, where he normally would have felt a surge of fear, there was an unusual lightness; the Guardian would never let him fall. Moments later, after two exhilarating loop-de-loops through the cool winter air, he plopped face-first into a large snowdrift with a happy shout.

His head popped out of the snow accompanied by a flurry of snowflakes freeing themselves from his hair and jacket. "That was AWESOME! Do you ever use the door?"

Jack, kneeling down from the top of the drift, grinned. "And where would be the fun of that?"

"Wha' was that, Frostbite?"

Jamie bit down on a smirk that threatened to spread across his face as Jack huffed, placing his hands on his hips, and rolling his eyes in a fairly accurate rendition of a teenage girl as Aster approached them, Sophie propped up on his shoulders petting one of his ears. If Jamie's little sister was being irritating, it didn't show. "I was in control of the situation, kangaroo. Besides, I can't very well live up to my title if I just waltz out the front door. Have to keep up the reputation with my fans."

"Can't do much about tha' if ya kill off the ankle-bitters by makin' 'em think they can fly, Snowflake."

"Oh, so I should stick to letting them play with my gigantic ears." He dramatically lifted an eyebrow as one hand shifted from his hip to form a perfect snowball behind his back. "Yeah, I don't think so, Roo. Once you think you can do my job better, I'm happy to switch. Until then…" The soft projectile was spinning through the air faster than the Pooka could blink, flattening against his forehead. Sophie held on to his ear tighter, eyes lit up and a toothy smile erupting. "Snowball fight!"

Jack skated around the group before Jamie or Bunny could mold a single snowball, freezing the topmost layer of snow into a thin layer of ice with his bare feet alone and just as abruptly turning it back into fluffy condensation when his skin left the surface. Ammunition formed itself from the heavier snow in the wake of his path. With his laughter came another breeze of snowflakes, the white clouds above the group graying with heavy precipitation and brimming with potential for another snowfall in the next hour.

Seeing the ready-made snowballs, Aster abandoned his hastily formed projectile and grabbed three of Jack's from the ground. As he felt the crash of snow against the back of his head, he retaliated by shooting off the snowballs with skill gained by using boomerangs. Jack was quick, but the last two hit their mark, sending their recipient skidding into a small bank of snow with a laugh that was all too infectious. Soon Aster had a wide smile unconsciously spreading across his face

Jamie inevitably turned against the two Guardians, turning the war into a free-for-all. Jack had to jump out of the snowbank to take cover as Jamie and Aster temporarily formed an alliance against him. "Hey! Wait a second!" He laughed as he skated backwards across the snow, dodging freshly packed snow. One managed to catch him, tossed with the superior aim of the Easter Bunny, and he made sure to give him a face full of snow in return. He swung around to catch the young believer off-guard, a branch above him suddenly dumping its bundle on him.

The white-haired, winter sprite perched himself on the tallest pile of snow with an evil laugh. "I am the king of winter! Hear me roar!" He raised his hands dramatically to the sky, tiny snowflakes beginning to stir in the air. A nearly imperceptible tug on his mind drew his attention from his snowball fight to the wind. It gusted at him with unusual warmth. The wind couldn't speak and rarely bothered communicating more than simple thoughts, but Jack had learned that. like the Sandman, it tried to be as clear-cut and obvious as possible.

Spring, he thought. "I know," he muttered, "but a couple flowers and a little sunlight won't melt me."

Urgent gusts kicked at him, but before he could complain, his Guardian senses tingled. Someone was having a little too much fun nearby, and as that tingling surged, he ducked into a roll. Two snowballs barely skimmed past his hair accompanied by disappointed yells. He matched them with two more sent back at the pair. "All your foolish attempts will come to naught," he laughed, until he had to yelp when Jamie pounced on him, aided by an extra push from Aster.

"Get him! Get him!" Jamie shrieked, taking advantage of Jack's momentary shock. Aster came over with a massive armful of snow and, as Jamie jumped out of the way, dumped it on to Jack. The sprite popped his head out of the snow, his laughter matching his friends'.

Jamie was the first to turn his face to the sky, and his chuckles died off. Dark, angry black clouds were eclipsing the grey, fluffy snow-bearing ones further up. Where the sun had been faint behind the cloud cover, now the sky was growing darker and darker.

"Jack…" he said, confused as to what was going on.

The winter sprite and Pooka were tossing snowballs back and forth, mirth replacing their competitive spirit. Faint blue sparkles trailed from Jack's ammo, lightening the atmosphere. It was rare that the two got along so well, particularly outside their official jobs, but that was hardly Jamie's primary concern.

"Jaaaack…" Worry tinged his voice and Jack turned in the snow that still covered him past his hips.

"Something wrong, Jamie?"

Pointing his finger to the sky, the boy began to notice a growing humidity in the air. "Why are the clouds different?"

Jack glanced up. The sky was completely clouded over. His carefully crafted snowflakes were unable to sustain themselves in the warmer, wetter air creeping over Burgess, and their numbers faltered. Crackling lightning jumped across the sky, and he felt the static run across his skin, making his hair stand on end. "Spring."

His snowballs' effect was beginning to die off from Aster, who followed their gaze. "'S tha' a probl'm? Ya din't ha' a probl'm with Easter las' year."

"Oh yeah, yeah, no problem." He warily listened to the thunder. "Unless it rains," he muttered. Nothing against spring, because flowers were pretty when they sprouted from beneath the snow, and Jack liked sticking around for a couple weeks before the warmth pushed him out entirely, but rain…that was a whole different field. Staff lifted, Jack made preparations to flee the area as the wind warned of a swiftly moving warm front.

"Rain? Wha' happ'ns if i' rains?"

Crashing thunder interrupted Jack's answer, and in the first silent interlude between bright flashes in the clouds above them, the sky opened up and the rain poured down.

"Jamie, yer gonna want ta get inside b'fore ya catch th' sniffles." The boy was hardly garbed for winter in his light sweater, winter patterned scarf and boots rising halfway to his knees. It was even worse for an early spring shower.

"But where's Jack?"

Aster realized that the snowdrift that Jack had been standing in was now empty, as if he had vanished into thin air. The Pooka turned three hundred and sixty degrees, searching for a sign. Once he returned his eyes to the now-empty snowdrift, he noticed something he hadn't before. Some of the snow had collapsed inwards. A step closer allowed him to see down the small hole at a shivering pile of ice and snow.

"Did Jack go back to the North Pole?" Jamie, Jack's first and favorite believer, considered the winter sprite to be virtually indestructible. Rain was clearly some kind of weakness for Jack, and something warm and fuzzy in the Pooka that genuinely liked the Guardian of Fun didn't want the kid to know that.

"Yeah, mate. If'n i' be spring 'ere, Frostbite's gotta be gettin' north to gi' snow ta th' other ankle-biters. I 'ear he's quite the fav'rite Guardian in Scandinavia now."

Jamie jumped up and down in the snow slowly being worn down by the heavy rain. Whether he was excited that his friend was gaining believers or the rain was seeping the cold through his clothes and he was just trying to keep warm, he seemed to buy into the story. "Cool! But he'll be back soon, right?"

"'Course he will. Ya just gotta believe," he concluded with a tap to the boy's nose. "Now ge' inside if ya don' wan' a cold."

He was met with a toothy grin, one of his front teeth still coming in, as the kid gave him a hug before running back to the front door of his house. "Tell Jack I want at least a week of snow days next year!"

"An' Frosty will be all too happy ta do tha'." Kneeling down by the hole in the snowdrift, he brushed some of the snow off the huddled figure. "Ya c'n come out now." White hair shook from side to side before a loud sneeze escaped him. Apparently elementals were just as susceptible to some illnesses as humans. "Come on, Frostbite. Let's getcha back to the workshop ta put some medicine in ya." When the figure didn't stir, Aster reached down to slip his paws beneath his shoulders and pulled him up. He almost couldn't believe his eyes at what he saw in his grip.

It was definitely Jack. Between the white hair, deathly pale skin, and the frost that lightly dusted his skin, clothes and hair, there was no one else that it could have been. Except Frost had been taller…and older… The sprite Aster was holding was maybe half Jack's height if exaggerated. His blue sweatshirt was much too big, trailing down past his knees, and the leggings must have been rolled up around his ankles because he couldn't see them. Had the Guardian of Fun had a child that was trying on his father's clothes, this is exactly what he would have expected.

"Frostbite?"

The child wouldn't meet his eyes, his own wide, ice blue orbs locked on the ground and fingers clutching at the inside of his too-long sleeves.

"Frostbite, I know it's you." He could feel Jack cringe, his shudder vibrating against Aster's paws. "Hey, what's wrong? Besides you being all...smallish."

"My…my tummy hurts. An' my skin is all…wrong." His eyes grew bigger and his pale lips wobbled. "Da rain huuurts, Bunny!" With a sharp keen, Jack buried his head into Aster's neck.

Aster was in momentary shock, reconciling the Jack he had known only through stories with the one he had come to know as a Guardian, and finally with the distraught child clinging to him for comfort. It took half a minute, at least. "Alrighty, mate. Let's…uh…" He'd said something about the rain, right? Aster wasn't sure how rain could hurt, but pulled Jack into his chest, wrapping his arms around him to keep off the moisture. Was this some kind of thing unique to the ice sprites and spirits? Mother Nature's creations always had limitations to keep them to their jurisdictions, making sure that deserts didn't spontaneously grow lakes overnight and rain forests didn't freeze.

Of all the Guardians, North would likely know. He had a library grown from Ombric's original, extensive collection, and somewhere in there had to be a guide to the health of ice-based spirits. "Okay, Jack?" Sniffles met his question, which he took to be a sign that he was listening. "Jack? We're goin' ta visit North, where i's nice an' chilly an' not rainin'." There was no objection, so he opened up a tunnel with the thump of his leg. "Hold on, frostbite." Chilled fingers gripped his fur more tightly. He took a moment to wince before jumping into the subterranean passage.

Opening a passage directly to the North Pole was easy enough, though the fact that North was conceited enough to name the whole region after himself made him roll his eyes every time the name was mentioned. Getting a tunnel directly into the workshop was impossible. There were more protections than the Russian knew what to do with, and there were so many that Aster didn't even know what half of them did. Some worked in tangent, surprising the intruder, marking them so a snow globe could easily track them, and tossing the poor bloke back out on to the snow, a frozen lake or, for the most unfortunate, _under_ the frozen lake. Of course, he could open a tunnel back out, but that he had only gotten North to agree to because he couldn't stand riding on the sleigh. Some things just weren't meant to fly, bunnies included.

He emerged with a coat of snow that he quickly shook off before it could numb his paws. A chunk of the white fluff toppled from his ear on to Jack, who quickly snatched it to his chest with a happy cry. Aster rolled his eyes. The kid was winter no matter his age. Freezing winds drove chills up his spine, and he just managed to suppress the words that came immediately to his lips, instinctually knowing that there was a child in hearing range.

Not that a three hundred year old spirit could truly be called a child, but when the big, shining sapphire eyes met his, he couldn't bring himself to honestly believe that. The Guardian of Fun was about as close as it got.

"North 'ad better 'ave somethin' ta fix this," he muttered, affixing Jack to his neck so he could free up all four of his limbs. The tear tracks had frozen on his near-white cheeks and some of his fur had stuck to it. Vowing never again to deal with young winter sprites, he bounded quickly through the harsh, snow-covered terrain. Jack didn't cling to his neck as tightly as he had expected, to his relief, and his surprised laughs and giggles as they caught air when crossing some of the steeper hills and drifts made the Pooka's heart jump. It was such an innocent sound, one that the Guardians didn't often hear from the young spirit.

Of course, after he had to grab the child's leg when he attempted to stand up and do who-knows-what multiple times on the short ride, he grumbled to himself that whatever survival instincts Jack had been mortal with had been eradicated during the change. Man in the Moon was doubtlessly the one to blame, knowing the bloke's preference for innocence over knowledge. Speaking of children at heart…

North's workshop drew closer, and the two yetis out front waved at him, signaling that all was well at the Pole. The hopelessly cheerful child let out another exuberant cry as he dragged him laughing off his back. "Again! Again!" he cheered as he dangled upside down from Aster's paw, to which the Pooka rolled his eyes.

"Mehbe later, anklebiter." The yeti opened the ridiculously large, red doors and North's workshop was unveiled before them. Post-Christmas festivities had finally died down enough to resume work for most of the yetis, but he could see at least seven still pulling down streamers from the high ceilings and brushing confetti from every visible surface. The Globe was still decorated in large wreaths and the massive pine tree dominating the ground floor had yet to be dismantled, ornaments of every imaginable shape and color gleaming with an inner light. And though the rest of the world may have gone to electric lighting, the workshop still lit up its Christmas tree with old-fashioned candles. He turned to one of the yetis to ask, "C'n ya get the big guy down here? We've got 'rselves a probl'm."

The yeti—Randy, was it?—scurried off in search of North. Jack, calmer now, was slumped by Aster's feet with a blank expression. Aster bent over to ruffle his hair. "How're ya feelin', mate?"

"I… My tummy still hurts," he murmured. The bright tinge that had been spreading across his cheeks during the short ride was still present, appearing more feverish than happily flushed now. The ice that normally dusted his skin was gone, replaced by a thin sheen of sweat. Even his hair seemed less blue than bone white. Aster searched the walls for a window, pulling the child into his arms when he found one that wasn't bolted shut. He set Jack down on the ledge underneath it, letting him curl up tiredly against the frosted panes. The pair of windows was held together by imbedded magnets and a chain, more decorative than serving a specific purpose. With minimal effort, he unhitched the silver chain and opened the one Jack wasn't resting against.

A strong gust of wind sent him reeling back into a passing yeti, which grunted in discontent but was otherwise unphased. "Yblagahgar," it huffed, helping him up. The yeti gestured at the window with a questioning raised eyebrow. "Glagh?" Aster turned, surprised to see young Jack Frost playing and quietly talking to thin air. It wasn't until the wind stirred the boy's hair and sweatshirt to Jack's delight that Aster considered that the winter spirit might actually be speaking to some invisible presence.

"Who's your friend?"

Jack looked up. "Friend? You mean Wind? He's my beeest friend!" Throwing his arms around the so-called-Wind seemed to make the presence very happy, throwing chilly power around like a small whirlwind into window panes, innocent bystanders, Aster and even Jack, who merely giggled and pulled his arms around tighter. The Pooka rolled his eyes, running paws over his arms to warm up the goosebumps. He could see where some of the kid's recklessness came from.

Wait, Wind? He'd said "Wind" right? Was that a nickname, or had Jack Frost actually befriended the untamable winds? And if he had, was it just the chilly North Wind or all four brothers? Maybe once or twice he had wondered vaguely if the winter spirit was using minor magic or spells to keep a breeze dramatically tossing his hair in just the right way.

Then, of course, he remembered that Jack was nothing if not a hopeless idiot who hated having responsibilities, and assumed not. The crazy idea that the wind was like an irresponsible friend, flustering Jack's hair into normally impossible styles, was more plausible.

North stepped out from his elevator on to the work floor, accompanied by the yeti that Aster had sent after him. (Well probably the one. To Aster, they all looked essentially the same. The large Russian was apparently the only person who could understand the gibberish, much less identify each individual one.) Before approaching him, North swept his head slowly from side to side, checking that everything was still in working order. Aster wasn't surprised. Ever since a simple mishap with the eggnog in late January, Aster and North were much more hesitant to drink anything that had come into the hands of the elves at any point, and for the time being, the tiny, tottering 'helpers' were being kept at arm's length from anything even remotely combustible, including people and yetis. It was hard not to make sure the elves weren't getting into trouble nowadays.

"Bunny!" the man declared happily, grabbing his shoulders in glee. "Is March! I not see you outside Warden dis close to Easter in two century!"

"Yeah, yeah. Frostbite dragged me out wi' a prank or I wouldn'a left,' he grumbled, though he held no grudge. He had, admittedly, needed a break from preparations. The citadel eggs could overlook the paint mixing, egg hibernation and flower growth. Jack's googie-castle had been pretty impressive. The egglets didn't seem to mind the cold or the ice he used to seal them together; in fact, they had been jumping around the teenager's feet, each wanting to be next. Aster had been tired when he chased the winter spirit out and maybe a bit irritable at the distraction, but not enough to be angry. "But tha's not why 'm here."

At first, Wind had lifted some of the color out of Jack's cheeks, recalling the snow-white tint. Some of the ice had refrozen along his skin and hair, and his eyes shone brighter. In the short time his friend had appeared, though, the feverish sheen had returned along with the exhaustion. He was barely conscious anymore, eyelids at half-mast and periodically nodding off.

Like a mother hen seeing its chick in danger, North moved faster than Aster would have thought possible to hover over the fever-stricken child. "Why child in workshop, Bunny? I can do nothing for mortal child." Yet in spite of his dismissive tone, he held his palm to Jack's forehead to feel his temperature. "Not too warm, but needs to be home under blanket. Parents give medicine. Child get better."

"North," Aster called insistently as the burly man pulled out a snowglobe. "I's Jack."

"Jack has son?" Confusion drew his thick eyebrows together. "Is immortal too?"

"Nah, mate, this _is_ Jack. I' rained and somethin' 'appened ta 'im."

North drew the drowsy child up so his bare toes didn't even skim the sill. Through reddening eyes, Jack looked up at North. Whether he was awake enough to recognize the man or not, there was no resistance to being held. His nose twitched and the boy sneezed. Twice. With a sniffle and a hoarse cough, he coiled his small arms around North's, put his head down and nodded off. Water dripped on to the floor of the workshop like the winter spirit was an icicle in springtime.

"You _sure_ dis is Jack?" His expression was anything but reassuring, and Aster nodded. It was hard to tell, with his lack of energy and significantly younger appearance, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was still their newest Guardian. North, still grasping Jack under his arms, held him up to the light with an inquiring eye. It was just like the look he studied his finished products with, one that searched for any telltale break or misplaced crack in the ice. "Tell me exactly what happen."

Aster relayed the full story, careful not to leave even the smallest out. North was silent throughout the telling, continuing his clinical observation, but when the storytelling reached the point at which Aster had pulled Jack from the snowdrift, he asked, "Where is staff?"

The Pooka halted midsentence. "His staff?" he repeated. "I…I dunno. I don' suppose i' was wi' Fros'bite or I woulda brought i' back wi' me."

"Interesting. Continue."

There was little else to add, except the short exchange that he had with Jack before bringing him to the North Pole. "I's like e's completely reverted ta a child, North. An' all e's said 's tha 'is belly hur's. I dunno wha's wi' 'im an' wa'er, but b'fore i' started rainin', Frostbite seem'd 'fraid a somethin' 'appenin'. 'ave you 'eard abou' anythin' like this before?"

"From Man in Moon's influence? No. We are all Guardians because of Man in Moon, and that only make us immortal. Little more. Maybe give extra spark of something." He brought the young Jack in to cradle him to his chest. The child gave a sigh, not quite curling into the warmth but not leaning back from the comfort either. A small hand clutched the red cape, hugging it to his chest with a sniff. "But Jack not just gain immortality, he became spirit of winter. He is one of Mother Nature's children too, and 'dey need conduit, like ring or staff."

"I'll run back ta Burgess. Mehbe problem was loss of 'is staff, not so much rain," Aster suggested. He tapped his foot, opening a tunnel to the town

"Possible." North glanced down to his arms at his warming bundle. "But something in belly says otherwise."

* * *

A/N: This…was supposed to be a one-shot. I swear. A bloody one-shot. But noooo, at eleven pages and growing, this monster just continues to suck my energy. I'm on break this week, so I'll try to update fairly quickly. (Heh… If only…)


	2. Snowballs and Fun Times

**Water and Its Effects**

Most children get colds. It's a common illness, and it spreads like wildfire between them. So many find themselves find themselves in the same position under the care of concerned parents: Blankets piled up until not the slightest breeze can touch their skin, not to mention light. A cup of chicken noodle soup with some kind of secret ingredient tossed in (even though kids don't realize that love can be put in soup). Of course, friends have to be kept away to hold the contagion at bay, but no school!

These same generalities didn't apply to immortal winter sprites, unfortunately. Though North was wracking his head and library for treatments, he knew in his heart that this was no simple cold. In fact, he'd much rather that Jack be much colder than he currently was. The bundle in his arms hadn't made a sound since Aster's departure four hours ago, and though there was a cool breeze constantly in the air around him, his fever had only gotten worse. The Russian pulled another book from the shelf, thirteen feet off the ground on a sliding ladder where he kept most of his volumes on health. A shudder from the small frame reverberated through his chest, and he put the book down to sweep a wet bangs back from Jack's face. The red flush had crept down his neck, melting snow and frost from his sweatshirt and taking the elaborate designs inadvertently frozen into the shoulders with it.

It was true that the seasonal spirits required a conduit to hold their immense powers in control. Every immortal knew when Mother Nature gifted life and power into a new spirit because they almost inevitably lost control in the first moments of immortality. But losing that conduit didn't take their powers with it, nor did it turn them into a quivering pile of slush. At least, if it had, it was not in the living memory of either Ombric or North. Despite the Easter Bunny's scoffing, North had read every book in his library the moment it came into his possession. He didn't have anything close to photographic memory, but he knew exactly where each book was and the general idea of the knowledge contained within.

Yet according to his memory, there was nothing here that explained a complete meltdown—no pun intended—of a seasonal spirit's powers.

He returned another book to its place, moving from health into a section specifically discussing Mother Nature's immortals. It consisted of only five thin volumes because it was extraordinarily rare to come into contact with any of her four wards. It was common knowledge that they were constantly busy with the natural world and that they found no joy in contact with other immortals or spirits, preferring to move unseen in the aether above the clouds or communicate in their own language with the mortal animals of Earth.

It was said that the seasonals were not like other spirits. Summer was a hot head, with a terrible temper that spent most of her time running the equator racing the Sun, spewing fire and harsh words at any that dared approach her. Some guessed that in her fervor to claim recognition, she spurred wars and ignited bloodshed in her wake. Spring was deaf and mute to men immortal and mortal alike. She sang only in solitude, making flowers blossom, repairing and repainting each leaf before returning it to its branch, and drawing the new grass up from the ground with murmurs of warmer weather. Animals heeded her quiet call, returning to old pastures and waking from hibernation. Autumn was a gloomy and often depressed spirit, condemned to sit in the shadow of Summer. He was forgetful and often forgotten. Some also suggested that he was bipolar, painting over the spring and summer greens with a new pallet of colors only to rip them from their branches with a chilly breeze in sudden bursts of frustration. Summer could drive men past reason, but Autumn was unpredictably – and unknowingly – just as cruel.

And Winter. Winter was the worst of them. The oldest of the seasons, he was frozen to the core, long ago turning his own heart to an icy lump in his chest. Winter did not get angry, did not get frustrated; he simply didn't care. Under his watch, what his brother and sisters created, he destroyed. Color was scorned and replaced with a monotone white, grey and black landscape. It wasn't that he no longer cared for men, but they feared him and refused to approach anymore for fear of the consequences. Oceans froze, blood iced and life died under his reign in the coldest months of the year.

The books he had collected on the seasonal spirits were no less judgmental or unhelpful for this predicament than the rumors had been, and he put them back with a heavy sigh.

North wondered how much he had thought was wrong. Jack was nothing like what he had assumed. Upon the young spirit's creation, Sandy had immediately taken to him. He had begun replaying their meetings for North and Tooth – neither of whom had ever met a seasonal spirit – delightfully conjuring up Jack's pranks for them to laugh at. Even the children loved him before they had ever been able to see the winter spirit, as Sandy unconsciously slipped his own memories into their dreams. But the boy was also lonely, the Guardians had come to discover after Pitch's defeat. He craved the attention of the kids who still too often walked right through him without a second thought and the other immortals who still too often carried their own, biased assumptions of Winter's cruelty, both blaming him for his cold season despite his warm heart.

As a child, these vulnerabilities were even more evident and all too clear. Jack had refused to let North go when the man tried to put him back down against one of the library windows where it would be coolest, even while too warm and delirious. So North had given in, unable to go against Jack's wishes even on normal days, and had the yetis open the windows to sap some of the heat from the air. The fires had to be kept up so he wouldn't freeze as well, and he had taken to wearing his gloves inside, but the effect on Jack's health was enough that he didn't find himself minding.

North climbed back down from the ladder, settling down into a chair by the fire where his feet could thaw. On the night of the new moon, Manny would be no help. It would be at least a week before he would be able to send messages again. Ombric was long lost to time and, judging by the collection he had passed on, would have known little more than North himself on this matter. As many stories Katherine had passed on, she had never stated her own opinion on the seasonals, leading him to conclude that she had never run into one either on her travels.

The Guardian of Wonder sighed and, with a final look at the hearth, said to a sleeping Jack, "Let's head outside. Maybe being in the snow will do you some good."

* * *

Aster tapped his foot on the ground, escaping Burgess for the moment. The town was emerging into spring, but it didn't change the fact that there was still snow on the ground and the temperatures were barely above freezing. As far north as it was, that was likely considered warm for early spring, which was the reason Frostbite could dump snow there anytime he felt like it.

Not that he would be doing any snow dumping at the moment, he remembered bitterly. No, the sprite had to play around with the kids in this backwater town, completely forget that spring was coming with an unhealthy dose of rain and lose his staff in the process. He hadn't even felt the need to _mention_ his little reaction to rain? He couldn't use the excuse that he didn't know, because the _look_ that had crossed his face, the one that had seared itself into Aster's memory, had been of knowing _exactly _what was about to happen.

And fishing through the snow had gotten him _nowhere_. Jack's stick was hard to miss normally, and it should have been even easier today with the majority of the snow mostly-melted to a thick, ugly slush. Of course this had to be difficult.

He should have headed back to the workshop to see how the sprite was doing, but he didn't want to just abandon the search for the kid's stick. Just once before had he seen him without it, and that had been during a battle with Pitch. It had slipped from his hands, and Frosty had gone from surfing the wind to falling uncontrollably through the overcast sky. It was another sight that he didn't want to see again. Something about the stick made it important—North had called it a conduit which still sounded like an understatement—and this was the last place he had seen it.

After four hours, though, it was beginning to look hopeless. Maybe only Jack could see it when he wasn't holding on to it? No, the yetis had grabbed it from him when North had suggested carting him back to the North Pole in a sack. (Really, North? Really?) And then when he'd accidentally fallen, his stick had still been perfectly visible. So maybe one of the children had come across it earlier and taken it for safe-keeping. They'd recognize it as Jack's from a mile away, even without frost decorating the wood. But he wasn't about to go door-to-door; the anklebiters would realize that something had happened to Jack the minute they knew his stick was missing. So that was out of the question.

Knowing that his fur was beginning to freeze to his skin, he opened a tunnel back to the Warren. North would be turning his workshop into a winter wonderland if he thought it would help Jack and that wouldn't do a thing to help him. He stifled a sneeze. Damn weather. It even seeped down through his tunnels to curl around his feet. Now how was he supposed to search for that stick…?

The tooth fairies! They were practically pros at hide and seek with these kids and their teeth, getting those quarters to them even when their molars had been lost and not found by the child themselves. If they could scrounge through leaves and find the pebble-size pieces of enamel, a hooked stick should be no problem.

China was warm, and up in the clouds where Tooth camped out in her magnificent palace it was even warmer this time of year. His fur practically bristled at the climate change.

The little fairies were busy as ever, zipping in and out of the open structure, around the towers and through high archways to collect, deliver and store the little white (and not-so-white) memories. The chipped paint and crumbling bridges had been quickly restored in the days following Easter, a date that most of the Guardians would love to forget. Aster had helped with the more delicate repainting for months afterwards. The tooth fairies had gone in pairs to collect the teeth during that time, the fear of capture still lingering in their small heads while life returned to normal. In the middle of the rush of small bodies and bright feathers hovered Toothiana, their queen, mentor and mother, alight with happiness as her fairies showed off the prettiest, shiniest teeth with the utmost pride.

Tooth was clearly busy with football getting into full swing across the exuberant children of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, so he simply tapped one of the off-duty fairies resting in a weeping willow by the pond. The golden plume crowning her forehead made him suspect that this one was Baby Tooth, one of Jack's many tiny fangirls. She opened one eye with a yawn, then the other as she realized who had woken her. She gave a small, inquisitive squeak. It was rare that one of other Guardians spoke to one of Tooth's fairies when they could talk directly to their queen.

"Baby Tooth?"

She nodded. It wasn't her name, but she adored it as she did her real one. Jack had given it to her, and that made her feel very special indeed. Even Toothiana had started addressing her with Jack's nickname.

"I need yer help. Jack's in trouble," he stopped her with a finger as she made to get up and inform her queen, "an' Tooth's busy. It isn' big. We jus' need ta find 'is staff."

The instinct to rush off to Tooth was still there, but she resisted. The kangaroo Guardian was right. Her queen was busy, and it wouldn't take many to locate the winter staff. She squeaked out another question: _Where?_

"Burgess. I' couldn't've left th' city, and th' snow's meltin', so there isn' many places for i' ta hide."

Burgess wasn't a big place, even by tooth fairy standards. She'd been there quite a few times for many of the kids there. Sometimes when Jack visited to give them a snow day closer to the fall or spring months, she _accidentally_ ran in to him and stayed to chat. She knew that she wasn't the only one who did, but she didn't just sit out of sight and drool at his teeth. Okay, maybe she had once…or twice…but that didn't mean that she couldn't talk to him too. Most of the other fairies couldn't make that claim, but she didn't hold it over them…too often.

She quickly returned to the crux of the situation. Searching Burgess wouldn't take more than two or three fairies half a dozen minutes to search if they all started in different places. Holding up a small finger, she twittered that she would need a moment to grab a couple fairies before they left.

Aster nodded. The fairies had little tact and even less patience, so he knew that when she asked for a moment, she used the term in all seriousness. Baby Tooth was hardly gone before returning with a pair of fairies in tow, two white plumes on both foreheads marking them as twins and centuries older than most of their siblings. Baby Tooth, showing a glimmer of intelligence, had grabbed two of her elders knowing that they wouldn't be as likely to blab to their sisters about their little adventure.

"Y' ready?" They nodded, and he reopened his tunnel, letting them fly through before jumping in. Immediately upon entering Burgess, and refreezing Aster's feet, Baby Tooth pulled out a small cloak. (Where had _that_ been stored?) Something about the patterning along the shoulders and fringes reminded him of another, very similar design that he had seen recently. "Did Fros'bite make that for ya?" The little blush that spread like wildfire across her face as she quickly shook her head confirmed his guess. "It's pretty. 'm sure he'd be 'appy to see ya wearin' it." A little smile crept across her cheeks until she shook her head with an impatient squeak. "Alrigh, I'll see ya buggers in a few minutes."

The instant that last word had left his lips, the three had darted off in a blur of color. He shook his head. Jack would have his stick back before he never knew that he'd left it behind. Aster sneezed again. Damn weather was getting to him. He couldn't wait for spring to take hold.

* * *

Jack so often found more amusement in the snow that anyone else could have ever managed. Give him a pile of it, and the sprite could conjure up forts, snowball fights, sledding hills, snowmen, and any number of childhood delights, not even counting snow days.

Today it seemed to do just as much good for his health as it would usually do for his good humor. The flakes seemed to adhere to his skin and hoodie as much as they did other snowflakes. His cheeks were more pink than red now and the ends of his hair had just begun to freeze back together as they were prone to do. The wind whipped through his hair, evidently intending to elicit some laughter from him, but he was still mostly prone in the Russian's large arms. His mere presence outside should have triggered a light snowfall, particularly so far north where there was always some kind of cloud cover present, but it did not.

That did not bode well. He hoped Aster would return soon with the staff, though something told him that the situation would not be resolved so easily. Either his belly was sensing ill portents or a lack of sugary sweets.

Until then, he continued to roll snow with his free hand into balls at his side, stacking them into little snowmen with the small sprite laid quietly in his elbow. A couple of the elves were donating their hats to the cause and snatching up small rocks for the eyes and mouth. They weren't always too bright, but occasionally they showed a spark of understanding. Well…when they knew how to make faces, anyway. A yeti had brought out a bag of baby carrots to stick noses on the small white faces. A few times, Jack had opened his eyes and looked intently at the little men. The wind would take his attention away for a moment, but his gaze would be on his snowy creations within a couple seconds. They captivated him, and that was reason enough to continue making them. These weren't flying trains, but wonder didn't always require elaboration. It was what he loved most about children.

One of the elves wasn't in the mood for snowmen, evidently, and settled down by North's booted foot with a huff. His friends were all out here, but it was cold and wet and there were no cookies to snack on.

North looked up from his snowball in surprise as Jack reached across his lap for the bell of his helper's cap, tugging on it to get the elf's attention. The elf turned with a huff that wordlessly said, "What do you want?" Instead of verbalizing an answer, the winter sprite blew what appeared to be a sparkling snowflake into his face. The Russian watched on in surprise as the little elf tried to resist the smile that suddenly came to his face. A small laugh escaped, followed quickly by another. His feelings towards being outside suddenly did a 180-degree turn as he quickly molded together a snowball and tossed it at an oblivious friend. The two giggled, their caps jingling. A new enthusiasm for winter swept through the group, even enrapturing the yeti crouched outside with them.

The yeti had a distinct advantage in the snowball fight that ensued, with the ability to dump piles of snow over the giggly groups of elves, but the pointy, jingling heads emerged only to laugh harder than ever. They, of course, had a certain advantage in numbers, and though they had little to no idea of the term _planning_, they occasionally managed to knock over the yeti by throwing all of their snowballs somewhat-simultaneously. The yeti barked out a laugh when the little elves swarmed him, swatting them off to regain dominance.

The moon was just emerging from its new phase, barely visible as a crescent of light, but it glimmered in good humor.

"Man in Moon choose well his guardians," North chuckled. "Once a Guardian of Fun, always a Guardian of Fun." Jack met his eyes with a little too much innocence to be convincing. He might have been sick, but he was still Jack inside and out.

A tall, furry form appeared a distance away, bending down to approach quickly on all fours. North moved to stand up, but by the time he was upright, it was evident that the figure was none other than E. Aster Bunnymund. "Bunny! What is news?"

"I go' nothin', North," he sighed. "Baby Tooth an' a couple a' otha fairies went out wi' me, under Tooth's nose. We look'd all over." The Pooka held up his palms in a placating manner. "It wasn' anywhere i' town." His legs shuddered in the extraordinary cold of the North Pole. Still he managed to bend down to examine the child hanging from North's arm, a small grin on his flushed cheeks. "An' 'ere's the l'il anklebiter 'imself. How're ya feelin'?"

Jack squirmed in the grip of the Cossack, loosing his limbs so that he could dangle two scrawny arms over one of North's. His bare feet dangled freely in the air, barely skimming against North's broad chest when they shifted with the wind. "Better," the boy decided after a moment of thinking, "'cos I got to come outside! Wind doesn't like indoors, 'cos you've gotta use inside manners or adults get _un_happy," he concluded, punctuating with a wild arm gesture.

Aster shifted to get blood flowing back in his legs. Not every immortal could spend their life in cold, barren winterlands. "You're bored?"

"Nah. I got you guys."

North let out a huge, happy chortle, dragging Jack against his chest in a hug as the boy weakly protested the manhandling. It wasn't everyday that one could get confirmations like that willingly from the winter sprite. The ones that did escape, he kept close to his heart.

"Plus, this snow is awesome! It's not the crunchy, half-ice spring stuff or the wet, mushy fall stuff." Jack would normally have used only the most elegant terms to describe the snow, phrases like 'compact', 'lightly coalesced', 'imprudent', or another word that he must have heard in passing from a private, New England boarding school. More a child than the Guardians had ever seen, his word choice was much more…elementary. "It's so _fluffy_!" Even Aster thought it was a little cute the way that he reached out to lift clusters of snowy flakes from the air. On his long, pale digits, the snow didn't melt. His hair might as well have been camouflage for the shy, frail frozen crystals, for they slipped right through to tuck in and hide away. The twinkle of the snow had returned to his eyes as he took in the epic elf and yeti snow fight ensuing all across his immediate surroundings. A half smile crept all too naturally across his face.

"North," Aster muttered urgently as the Russian kept a giggling sprite from falling face first from his grasp into the bank, "incomin'."

He turned just in time to catch a flurry of motion before Tooth was aflutter right in front of him, her sight for the small child in his arms alone. A bundle of nervous energy as always and a mothering personality at heart, Jack's change seemed to have torn her between being absolutely captivated by the young boy and worried over a fellow Guardian's sudden deterioration back into childhood. Starting over her previous wordless exclamation, and resisting the urge to steal the cuteness away from North, she conceded, "So it's true. He really is a child again." When North nodded, she brushed the bangs out of his eyes.

Jack tore his eyes from the winter battle as he felt the warm touch. "Tooth!" he cried cheerfully. "Look, I made a snowman!" As she told him that it was the best one she had ever seen, the blinding smile that he gave her might have caused snow blindness, but definitely made her heart skip a beat at those perfectly molded enamel and that unbelievable white had a shine that she could almost see her reflection in and what an incredibly shaped canine with just the right curvature with a delicate point to—focus, Tooth! A shake of her head put priorities back in order and at the forefront of her mind. Only Jack and his _sparkling,straight,unchipped,perfect_ teeth could distract her so thoroughly. Oh my, there she went again. It was a miracle that she got anything done when he visited the Tooth Palace when Asia began to feel the creeping cold that signalled late autumn.

"Did one of yer fairies tell ya? About Fros'bite, I mean."

There was that little bit too that wondered her. Clearly Baby Tooth had known, because she had left early to assist Aster yet never mentioned it until her admittance on their journey to the Arctic. Her fairies were so sweet, letting her finish work during such a busy season rather than immediately telling her, but really, there were things she would rather know and worry over than be late to offer help. "No, I had a visitor who needed directions. How is it that I seem to be the last one to know about this?"

Aster and North exchanged a look, both knowing that they were completely out of their depths. "It was just… Tooth, we know how busy you are, you and Sandy, and between the two of us we thought we could pull something together…"

"Wait, wait. You haven't even told _Sandy_? He'll be so torn up that he wasn't included in helping one of his best friends because you thought he might be a little _busy_!"

They looked guiltily at their feet, saved only at the very last moment. "Pretty fairy," a soft voice murmured. Their eyes dropped to the young sprite perched on North's knee, chin perched up on two small fists.

"What did you say?" she asked almost at a whisper, as if even a decibel louder would burst his eardrums.

"Pretty fairy," he repeated with a small smile. "You frowned and looked sad and your face got all scrunched up," which he tried to mimic to little avail, "because of mistakes. But mistakes are past, and now is now which means you should be smiling, like before. You look pretty when you smile." Jack frowned as if the thought process had been hard to work through and he wasn't sure if it had come out correctly.

Tooth's hands flew up to her mouth. "Jack, that was…" But the sentence wouldn't complete itself in her mind or out loud, because it was something that she would have never have expected to hear from the teenager. At the same time, she automatically knew that it was very much a Jack thought, from the unfettered honesty to the immediate forgiveness of past mistakes. So many wrongs had been done against the young sprite since his birth as an immortal out of irritation at his own mistakes and immature actions, but he so easily looked past all of them in the childish hope for a better, happier future. Only as a child was it so easy to see in him, as the seriousness quickly dropped as snow began to fall.

"Look, Tooth! More snow!" He stretched out to catch the first of the flakes on his finger, toppling into a pile of snow as North forgot to heed his safety. Aster extracted the laughing sprite from the drift by his leg, which further amused Jack to no end. "I'm upside down! Tooth! Tooth look! Didja see that!"

It didn't even take one of Jack's instinctually made snowflakes to pull a laugh from behind her hands, a smile rapidly taking over her face. Aster rolled his eyes at his antics, but propped the boy on his shoulders as he cried, "Up! Up!" "Don' be freezin' anythin' up there, mate, ya hear?"

North grinned at the scene, instructing one of the yetis not being pelted with snowballs and jingling hats to grab him a camera from the lower levels. He might as well take advantage of this moment for blackmail against his Easter rival, not to mention his own personal scrapbook. Then he stumbled back into the previous conversation that Jack had wonderfully intervened in, the one where Aster and himself were about to get their asses handed to them on a golden platter because Tooth had been notified by a stranger about… Wait, a stranger? Who needed directions?

"Tooth. Tooth!" Her distraction by the innocent scene was almost painful to disturb. "Your stranger, who was it?"

"Oh." She responded dazedly, forcibly pulling herself from the haze of carefree peace that Jack had conjured from the starry winter night. "That person... She was right behind me before we crossed the Arctic, but I think I may have sped up or she slowed down. But it took me by surprise, because you know how little contact we get with the other elementals, especially—"

A voice that spoke of a gentle wind gracing the petal of a flower called out quietly, but with the firmness that a beam of sunlight caressing the skin caries after crossing out of a cold shadow. It sung without the crack of experienced age or careless youth, but rather as the blossoming of potential into the sweet fruit of the future. It held the love of a mother, a sister, a childhood love and the strongest bonds that kinship could forge, the pure emotion that could only be conveyed by the pure-hearted singer for there are not words in any language that have ever existed or ever will that can try to describe the intangible feeling. "Winter Frost," it called, and the words shouldn't have hummed with such warmth in the freezing embrace of winter, but they did. In the light snow flurry, the form was barely visible beyond the flash of soft pink and gentle yellow.

Jack perked up at the voice, but lay back almost reluctantly against Aster's ears. (He knew the kangaroo bristled at that, thinking he was about to ice his long and overly sensitive ears; he hardly noticed it at the time.) Even as a child, he instantly recognized the voice. As winter incarnate, it resonated with familiarity in his still heart, setting his hair to stand on end and coursing adrenaline through him (or would have, if it still could). His very bones rattled, yet it was merely as recognition of a connection binding them closer than blood or friendship.

"Spring Butterfly," he answered in a deep halting voice not his own.

* * *

A/N: Yeah, quick update… *sigh* I had the first 90% done before getting completely stuck in the transition. So, three weeks later than expected, hope you guys liked this sugary piece of tooth-rotting fluff. More fluff to follow.

Oh, and Aster may just get shrunk down to his adorable chibi form soon…*giggle*


	3. Welcome to the Family

**Water and Its Effects**

"Winter Frost," Spring called, and their little Jack's sparkling blue eyes grew colder (or maybe it was just the snow reflecting off his eyes because the scrawny sprite wasn't capable of feeling such hard emotions). The light snowfall that had been so playfully catching in his hair was turned aside with an icy, whipping airstream.

"Spring Butterfly," he acknowledged in the deep, commanding voice of Winter. Jack was forgotten as something older and more powerful was remembered, something that spoke in the slow, halting tenor of glacial movement with emotion buried but still visible through the cracks in the thick icy layers covering it. Where Spring was ageless, Winter was older than living memory.

When Spring reached out from the snowy veil, form wavering as the warmth of emerging life contested with the frigid polar air, Winter grasped the proffered hand even as Jack internally flinched away. Jack's small, mildly-chilled form was suddenly no longer weighing down on Aster's shoulders, an unexpectedly unwelcome warmth creeping back into his fur in his absence.

Spring and Winter's forms blurred momentarily as lightning crackled across a rapidly darkening Northern sky, towering storm clouds building with frightening tenacity. Above them, a twister was beginning to spin steadily, gaining form as it drew in neighboring clouds. Further below the winds picked up speed before abruptly dissolving along with the dark clouds, thrown out of existence as fast as they had been brought to life. All that remained in their wake were two figures, one with the snow melted away in a circle around her bare feet and the other's gleaming, black dress shoes walking atop the precipitation without leaving prints in the snow.

Spring was a slender woman, and no more than six feet tall barefoot. Her blonde hair shone almost gold when the sun caught ahold of it. Strips of it twisted lazily around her waist like ivy, but the majority was caught up in the careful arrangement of blossoming flowers decorating her hair with red, orange, yellow and vibrant pink. Where the petals fell at her feet, young grass emerged from the frozen terrain. If a river could be condensed into fine Egyptian cotton, it would have wrapped itself around her like a Greek toga. The clarity and depth of the sun-touched river were not lost in her dress, the ripples and waves captured in motion and ever changing in the fabric. Her skin had a healthy pink flush, and when the Guardians looked at her in disbelief, she warmly smiled through lips matching the roses in her hair.

"This past day has weighed heavily on all of the Guardians," she stated, the words leaving her mouth like a pleasant stream gently weaving through a grassy field, wind just skimming the water to leave small ripples in its wake. Her voice had a soft echo, as if she was speaking across a great distance. "As the Seasons, we apologize. Our personal matters should not become the burden of our fellow immortals, and yet they have caused much distress. We are in your debt."

"But we're getting everything fixed, so don't concern yourselves too deeply," her companion remarked coolly, each consonant ringing as if he were tapping hollow ice at just the right point.

Between his hat and dress shoes, it was difficult to tell his height. He was at least a full head taller than Spring but just as lanky despite the grey hairs becoming evident in the lush black waves. Unlike Spring, he had kept up with the times. His Fedora was classic by mortal standards, and his midnight black suit had been carefully tailored to accentuate his figure. The shine of the sun off the snow was also evident in the threads of his apparel as he moved, capturing and reflecting back the same crystalline iridescence. The dark, sapphire tie emblazoned with pale snowflakes served to offset and brighten his brilliant eyes, his starched white dress shirt paling in comparison. Everything was in its place—the collar pressed neatly beneath the lapels of his suit, the impossible lack of wrinkles in anything (including his lightly tanned skin), not a single hair askew—yet his overall look was that of nonchalance. His dark jacket was artfully pushed aside by the hands on his hips. The Fedora appeared to be glued to his scalp, because despite the cocky toss of his chin at Spring's apology, the hat steadfastly refused to move even when his hair dramatically swished to the side. Winter was the picture of cool, elegant nonchalance.

Spring shook her head, sending a small shower of colorful petals to the exposed earth at her feet. "Winter is impertinent, as usual, but we have little time for explanations." She nodded to her companion and he obliged.

"Be seated, children," Winter intoned melodramatically. With an almost teenage flip of his hand, three chairs formed themselves from the snow and ice, sculpting to the size of the Guardian standing before it. "It's story time."

Even before Winter was done, both were stepping back and to the side to put space between themselves. A small trickle of water emerged where Spring dug her bare toes into the warmed dirt and soil. It emerged in a small valley, and as the water rose rapidly to touch Winter's soles, the surface was invaded by a sheen of thick ice. Moments later, there was a smooth, frozen and roughly circular pond about five feet in diameter.

Tooth had already perched herself up on the edge of her seat to watch the proceedings. Her wings fluttered quickly behind her. North watched, but from the corner of his eye, he was running his fingers delicately over the chair's embellishments, admiring the almost invisible handiwork. Aster was more irritable at being called a child. When he sat, he was pleased that the chair was not cold as he had expected.

"The Seasons were formed as Mother Nature found that one person could not keep accurate control over the entire planet, especially when she also had to rein in and teach the youngest immortals." As Spring spoke, scenes played out in the frozen water. "She spun three immortal bodies one by one as their times came. The first flower poked out from the muddy ground on the banks of the Oceana coast, and when it bloomed, she gave it form and consciousness as well as a name."

"Spring," Winter said, the syllable ringing out as if a snowflake had alighted upon the ground, "the fairest."

"But the sun grew hotter and all flowers have their time. So where the sun pushes the wind through the fresh grassy blades the fastest on the African savannah, she gave it a voice."

"Summer, the wildest."

"And when the sun began to wane, a chill swept the air. When the leaves of the New World shed their green foliage to let loose the most brilliant colors, she gave that color a hand to paint with."

"Autumn, the cleverest."

"Mother Nature is by no means perfect, but in the beginning there was no need for the warmth of life to cease. An icy hand gripped the planet as she turned her eye to other matters. Her three children knew not how to deal with the cold and bitterness that fell over the land. She assumed that the emptiness of space had consumed the Earth, and sought to drive out the invasion.

"That was when the Man in the Moon stepped in to stop her. Mother Nature knew life, but she did not understand death. Things must grow, but so must they have control. Where once life could thrive unchecked, so it must now mature and know its bounds. Man in the Moon put his hand into the cold and dark, where she would not walk, and removed a single snowflake. Together with Mother Nature, they taught the new form humility and understanding so that the cold could also know control. They gave the cold sight to see through the darkness."

"Winter, the youngest," he sighed, as if the Season had heard the story enough times to make his ears rupture and fall off.

"But Jack is Winter, right?" Toothiana interjected. "Then how does he have memories of a mortal life if he was born immortal?"

"When the Seasons were first created, they were missing something crucial that Mother Nature didn't know how to teach or create. That was humanity. We, that is to say, the first three of us, were born before humans existed, so she wasn't quite certain what was amiss. As mankind began to thrive, she realized that we had been born from nature alone. We were simple and understood only in the natural form that drives seedlings up, that moves leaves to find sunlight, that tells birds how to fly."

"So Mother granted us the forms of dying children who were still pure of heart and knew no malice," Winter explained. "They share with us their personalities and lives, while we delay their deaths and grant them control over our given season. Since each child is different, the Season manifests in different ways."

North held up a hand. "Delay? Seasons are not immortal? _Jack_ is not immortal?"

"The Seasons are immortal but the children we share it with are not. Unlike the Guardians, we are not sustained by belief. If Jack Frost had been hit by Pitch's bolt of fear, it is likely that Winter would have simply taken a new child under his wing."

"And Jack would no longer have been a Guardian," Winter added softly. "I'm a great guy and all, but it is Jack who has a soft spot for kids and snowball fights. Jack is Winter, but I am not Jack Frost."

He may as well have blown a cold gust of wind their way, because a chill went through all three of the Guardians. Aster felt acutely where there had been a cold spot on his shoulder, and once more he suddenly felt a few degrees too warm.

"That doesn't happen too often, though. We live with the same personalities at least for a good millennium or two until a brawl breaks out or Mother or Father grab a personality too strong for the power." He shrugged.

"Father?" Aster was fairly certain that in the very, very long memory of the Pookas, there had been no mention of a Father Nature. Was that where the image of Zeus come from?

"Father Moon." Winter explained. "Because I got two parents, Father occasionally takes pity on a dying child and kicks out my old personality to make room for another one." He rolled his eyes. "Ah the family drama. As a little snowflake, I could never have _hoped_ to be adopted into such an irritating little group."

"Family history out of way," North quickly interrupted, "what happened to Jack?"

Winter threw his hands up into the air, a small drizzle of snowflakes falling from the cloudy sky above them. "I have no idea. That's what _Spring_ is here to explain. One minute I'm happy and content with pulling a Northern front down from Scandinavia to blow some sprinkles into Holland while Jack started up another flurry, and the next it's too warm to think straight, much less get _anything_ done!"

'Weren't you the one who said things were being handled?' Aster just narrowly resisted voicing.

There was a brief hesitation as all eyes went to Spring. "There was an…_incident_…with Mother."

The Guardians exchanged glances at the embarrassment openly obvious on Spring's face, her cheeks blazing a bright red. Unlike Winter, who was clearly absorbed in Jack's happy-go-lucky personality, Spring had always appeared to be composed to the extreme.

Winter facepalmed with a long suffering sigh. "What did you do now?"

"It wasn't me!" she cried plaintively. "Well, it wasn't all my fault at any rate. Seb was being all gloomy again and reminding me—well, not me, but Hana—about the prospects for global warming and what these scientists were saying about climate change." She paused for a moment. "So I might have been talking to Mother about how Seb was affecting Autumn and complaining that kids these days are too grown up for their age." She sniffed. "Of course, I forget that Mother is getting old and that she sometimes doesn't completely think these things through… Anyway, she might've tried to make Hana and Seb into kids again. And I don't mean kids, like where Hana and Seb are now, I mean _little kids_."

"You have _got_ to be kidding me. Hana must be getting to your head."

"And she might have forgotten how affecting our bodies affects our powers and…ah…temperaments."

Winter's face was going to be bruised if he kept hitting it so loudly. The Guardians still appeared to be somewhat confused, so he clarified, "Mother dearest turned us into kids. Literally. Unfortunately, thanks to _Spring_, this means that our children don't have the mental strength to control maintaining their seasonal abilities or their forms in climates that they aren't acclimated to. In someplace too warm, Jack would melt."

"And if Hana takes back control now, she'll freeze."

"I imagine that Seb's much more adorable now," Winter considered with a small smirk.

"And Cande's an absolute nightmare child."

They both shook their heads to rid themselves of the mental picture that immediately hit both Seasons.

"How d'ya get things back ta normal?" Aster demanded. "Mother Nature did this, so she has to be able to change all of you back. Why don'tcha, I dunno, call her up or something?"

Winter attained a thoughtful expression. "Oh, so that's why you're here. Spring needs you guys to talk to Mother Nature for us, and babysit the rest of the kiddies until then."

"Ya've gotta be pullin' my leg! Do it yerselves."

"Aster!" Tooth exclaimed.

"We would," Spring said apologetically, "but we can only keep these forms for a short time. Maybe an hour or two at most. Our powers are limited to the trivial activites we demonstrated. Travelling long distances is more than we have to expend."

"The North Wind is a friend of Jack's, not mine," Winter admitted. "And as much as the Wind would like to carry Jack back to Mother, he can't take passengers."

"So ya came ta hooch off us when the bunch of ya have some kinda family fight?" Aster asked with an indignant scoff. "All this after there's not a breath outta the lot of ya for the last couple _million_ _years_?"

"Not that we mind, of course," Tooth quickly added. "Jack is our friend, and I guess you're the closest thing to family he has."

"Yeah, an' they've got the family bit down good, ignoring 'im for his entire life. Why're ya comin' ta outsiders fer 'elp when clearly ya don' want anythin' ta do with us?"

"We would never isolate one of our own children on purpose," Winter scowled. "The Summer and Winter children cannot come in contact with each other, Spring or Autumn for too long."

"Though we are family," Spring explained, "our gifted elements are turbulent at best. The Autumn children and my own have milder natures, ones that are the most synchronized of the four Seasons. However, they each sit on a precarious balance between Winter and Summer. In the presence of either, Spring and Autumn would lean more towards the season they personally favored. That is not a risk that we or Mother Nature can take."

"In each other's presence, Summer's child and mine would destroy each other, taking us out with them. At the price of two children's loneliness, we protect the life and balance of the Earth." In an oddly contemplative tone as he perched his chin sideways on the knuckles of his fingers, Winter said, "It's the same choice Jack would make if given the chance, don't you think?"

Though the Guardians—even sweet Tooth—glared the Season down, they knew already in their hearts that he was right. Jack was a guardian because he had unknowingly devoted himself to the children even before taking his oath. If it meant he had to be friendless and invisible until the end of time, he still would not do anything that might harm them. His selflessness was what made him a Guardian in the first place.

"What must we do?" North demanded in his booming tenor, the one that frequently sent elves and yeti alike into a flurry to get out of his path. "We do this for Jack, not Seasons." His mind was filled with the image of a small Jack tugging on the hat of one of his elves with a small, pure smile. Whatever their grudge against the winter sprite's so-called family, they would protect their youngest with their lives.

"Of course," they answered in eerie concurrence, though their voices each carried different messages. Spring smiled warmly in gratitude, while Winter's was frosty and much more sarcastic.

Spring waved a hand over the icy pond beside her, lighting the surface up once more. A map of the Earth spread out across the ice, small colored dots of all colors appearing in small clusters in nearly every conceivable location. "Just as you keep an eye on your children, so we watch over ours. However, the only ones affected by Mother's recent…episode…are the four Seasons. Winter and I are both here with you." She knelt down to point to the Northern most dots, one white and one green. "Summer's child, Cande Ardor, rarely leaves the African continent, and it appears that she is in Kenya at the moment." A red dot blazed brightly in the middle of the country, moving rapidly north.

"When she is active, wildfires tend to follow in her wake. Follow the smoke and look for the bright red hair," Winter said. "She's pretty difficult to miss. Autumn's child is Sebastian Regen. He's a bit more difficult to spot, especially since he likes to dress the same as the other children. Looks like he's sticking to Germany for the foreseeable future." Autumn was a sober blue-grey dot sedately keeping to southwestern Germany.

"You should know from personal experience how hard it is for the children to leave their hometowns," Spring scolded lightly, to which her companion turned his head with an indignant huff, muttering something about 'sentimental brats' under his breath. "Hana will be able to point you to Seb, since they often keep each other company when the temperatures are agreeable. Once you have all the children, one of us will appear for a short time to lead you to Mother. She's constantly on the move, and it's difficult to predict where she'll be at any given time."

Tooth shifted nervously around on her perch. "You said that certain Seasons can't be near each other? Won't this put the children in danger?"

"Nah, not really," Winter said, waving off her concern. "I'd bring a coat for Summer and some ice for Jack and I, as a precaution. This is a unique situation because they are not as closely bound to their abilities and can't affect each other as strongly. The longer they stay in this form, the more disconnected they will be from their Season and the more human they become. Being in the right temperature range slows down the degradation."

Leaning forward in his seat, North laid his forearm across his knee. His forehead wrinkled as his concern grew. "Then the reason Jack has fever…?"

"That's right." The Season casually removed his Fedora to brush off the snowflakes that had begun to accumulate on the rim. "He's dying."

* * *

A/N: PLEASE READ! It won't take too long!

Clarification moment. English is being used as a universal language, but all the seasons are speaking in the native tongues of the child whose personality they have. So Spring/Hana speaks in Japanese, Summer/Cande in Spanish, Autumn/Sebastian in German and Winter/Jack in English. Additionally, we have North, who probably speaks Russian most of the time, Aster, who speaks whatever the Pookas speak, and Tooth who speaks something else entirely.

I could have written with everyone speaking in their native tongue, but then you all would have killed me (or at the very least, sent me angry flames). Since we know that everyone understands each other, think of this as the English subtitles, 'kay? Thank you.

Let me repeat the Seasons' names to clarify:

Spring = Hana Cho (or Hana Butterfly)

Summer = Cande Ardor (or Cande Burning)

Autumn = Sebastian Regen (or Sebastian Rain)

Winter = Jack Frost

Their last names are translated into the language native to where the season's child was born and raised, since that would be their native language. This means they would change accordingly with each new personality. The first name is the child's. So if Jack had been Japanese (and for some reason been named Jack by his parents), he would be Jack _Shimo_, but when addressed as a seasonal, he would still be called Winter Frost since everyone is speaking in English for the sake of the readers. Sorry for the complexity.


End file.
